Line #4 Music/FlandersAndSwann


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/flandersandswann_2.png]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Michael Flanders (left) and Donald Swann (right).]]
3
4	->''"The purpose of satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip away the blanket of comforting illusion and cozy half-truth with which we surround ourselves. And our job, as I see it, is to put it back again."''
5	-->-- '''Michael Flanders''', ''At The Drop Of Another Hat''
6
7	Michael Flanders and Donald Swann were a duo who co-wrote and performed comic songs in the 1950s and 1960s. Unusually for the time neither performer stood during their shows, Swann being seated at the piano and Flanders confined to a wheelchair by polio (contracted in service during UsefulNotes/WorldWar2).
8
9	The two began their musical careers together at school but were drawn apart on the outbreak of the war. A chance meeting in 1948 led them to begin writing comic songs for other performers to sing before they decided to start performing for themselves in a show titled ''At The Drop Of A Hat''. After touring worldwide they returned to Britain to open their new show ''At The Drop Of Another Hat'' and recorded a number of songs not heard in either show.
10
11	In 1967 they ceased touring together but remained friends until Flanders' death in 1975.
12
13	----
14	!!Their works provide examples of:
15
16	* AffectionateParody: Many of their songs use this trope, and recently they have become subject to one themselves by Series/TheArmstrongAndMillerShow.
17	%%* AllAreEqualInDeath: "Twenty Tons of TNT"
18	%%* AnythingYouCanDoICanDoBetter: "Sounding Brass"
19	* AudienceParticipation: "The Hippopotamus"
20	-->'''Flanders:''' And tonight, by way of encouragement attendants will be passing among you. With rawhide whips.
21	* BathsAreFun: "In the Bath"
22	--> ''Then there comes that dreadful moment, when the water's running cold.\
23	When the soap is lost for ever, and you're feeling tired and old.\
24	It's time to pull the plug out, time to mop the bathroom floor.\
25	The towel is in the cupboard; and the cupboard is NEXT DOOR!\
26	It's started running hot, let's have another hour or more.''
27	%%* BedmateReveal: The ending of "Madeira, M'Dear"
28	* BilingualBonus: "Je suis le Tenebreux" sung by Swann, is a genuinely moving French poem set to music with none of the comedy that the performance implied from the reaction to the line "I think translation rather spoils it."
29	%%* BlackComedyRape: "Madeira, M'Dear" and "Philological Waltz"
30	* BlindIdiotTranslation:
31	** "La Belle Dame sans Merci" - The beautiful lady who never says thank you.
32	** Just after Flanders has emphasised that the song "Vanessa" is in no way autobiographical:
33	---> It says "mf" at the top of the music. This doesn't stand for Michael Flanders. It is a musical indication, and it means the song should be sung "mit feeling".
34	%%* TheBore: "[[PunBasedTitle The Boar]]"
35	* BravadoSong: Downplayed in "The Spider Song". It's mainly a FearSong about how SpidersAreScary, but it also has lyrics about how the singer is ''not'' scared of other bugs.
36	* ButLiquorIsQuicker: "Madeira M'Dear" is built around this trope.
37	-->''Unaware of the wiles of the snake in the grass,\
38	Or the fate of the maiden who topes,\
39	She lowered her standards by raising her glass,\
40	Her courage, her eyes, and his hopes.''
41	* TheCasanova: The man in "Madeira M'Dear" is a CasanovaWannabe at minimum, is described as "no stranger to vice", and when he scents success, secretly carves "one more notch/On the butt of his gold-handled cane", so he presumably has a record of success. However, he apparently [[ButLiquorIsQuicker employs booze]] rather than charm or looks for this purpose.
42	* DaysOfTheWeekSong: "The Gasman Cometh", in which one tradesman calls after another, beginning with the gasman on Monday.
43	* DisasterDominoes: "The Gasman Cometh", in which the gasman causes a small disaster which has to be sorted out by another tradesman, right through the week.
44	* DramaticDrop: In the song "Madeira M'Dear", the young girl drops her glass when she recalls words from her mother:
45	--> "Oh my child, should you look on the wine that is red,
46	--> "Be prepared for a fate worse than death."
47	--> She let go her glass with a shrill little cry.
48	--> Crash, tinkle it fell to the floor.
49	* DreadfulMusician: Spoofed in "A Song of Patriotic Prejudice", which contains the line "he sings far too loud, far too often, and flat", and the music suddenly changes to a flatter key.
50	%%* FatherIDontWantToFight: "The Reluctant Cannibal"
51	* FearSong: "The Spider Song" is about an arachnophobic man who's afraid to shave because there's a spider in the bath.
52	* HereWeGoAgain: "The Gasman Cometh", "A Song of the Weather", and "There's a Hole in my Budget".
53	* HisNameReallyIsBarkeep: From "Greensleeves":
54	-->He sent for a playwright friend of his and he said to him "Look, kid.." ''(audience laughs)'' That was his name: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kyd Kyd]].
55	%%* HurricaneOfPuns: "Greensleeves"
56	* IAmNotWeasel: "The Gnu Song" has two references to g-nus (that's the way they say it in the song) objecting to being confused with "similar" animals like bison, okapis and hartebeests. One even threatens to sue.
57	* ImAHumanitarian: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjAHw2DEBgw "The Reluctant Cannibal"]] is about a young man who doesn't want to join the rest of his tribe in eating people. Being from 1956, it has a political edge to it, satirizing the Cold War. His father, "the chief assistant to the assistant chief", declares that refusing to eat people can only lead to even more disruption, like not making war.
58	-->'''Father:''' Going around saying "don't eat people", that's the way to make people hate you!\
59	We always have eaten people, always will eat people—you can't change human nature.\
60	You might as well say don't ''fight'' people!\
61	'''Son:''' "Don't fight people"? ''[starts to guffaw]'' That's ridiculous!\
62	'''Father:''' ''[pleased]'' My boy!\
63	'''Both:''' Ridiculous!
64	* TheIngenue: The young lady in "Madeira M'Dear" is evidently an ingenue.
65	-->''She was young, she was pure\
66	She was new, she was nice\
67	She was fair, she was sweet seventeen...''
68	* InsaneTrollLogic: Parodying Neo-Luddites and their attitudes, Flanders said "If God had intended us to fly, He would never have given us the railways."
69	* JobSong: "The Gasman Cometh" is a song about a whole series of tradesmen visiting the house of the singer to repair the previous one's damage, inadvertently causing damage themselves.
70	* KilledMidSentence: The title character of [[spoiler:"The Ostrich"]].
71	* LeastRhymableWord:
72	-->We were never able to come up with a rhyme for "Khrushchev" until he'd gone: "Did he fall, or was he putsched off?"
73	* LifeOfTheParty: "Twice Shy"
74	-->''When it's Ladies' Night at the Carlton Club,\
75	And a young woman comes in.\
76	Smoking a six-inch Burma cheroot,\
77	And playing a violin.''
78	* ListingCities: "Slow Train", which specifically lists British communities whose rail services and lines had been closed by the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_Axe Beeching Axe]] starting in 1963, to cut the heavy financial losses incurred by the UK's railways.
79	* MultipurposeMonoculturedCrop: "The Wompom" is about the world's most miraculous, all-purpose plant: not exactly an animal, but certainly more than a mere vegetable.
80	* NapoleonDelusion: one of several psychiatric conditions the title animal feigns in "The Elephant".
81	* OstrichHeadHiding: The chorus of "The Ostrich".
82	* OverlyLongGag: "In the Desert" and "Kokoraki"
83	--> '''Swann:''' I omitted eight verses!
84	* ParkingProblems: "Parking the Car" is about this. "You feel like Noah in the ark/Afloat o'er what is now Iraq/Trying to find/A place to park."
85	* PatrioticFervour: "A Song of Patriotic Prejudice" is a semi-AffectionateParody of the mindset.
86	* PunctuatedForEmphasis: The last line of "The Ostrich".
87	--> '''Flanders:''' Here in this nuclear testing ground is no place. To. Bury. Your. Head.
88	* ShaggyDogStory: In ''At The Drop of a Hat'', Flanders introduces the song "The Gnu" with a story about a car that always parks in front of his house, forcing him to park further uphill (thus making it an even bigger struggle to get between his car and his wheelchair) — a car with the registration number GNU 655. Apart from containing the word "Gnu", it has nothing to do with the song, as Flanders happily lampshades.
89	* SpidersAreScary: "The Spider" is from the perspective of a man who has defeated all manner of large predators, but is petrified by "the spider in the bath."
90	* StarCrossedLovers: "Misalliance" (The tragic tale of the right-handed Honeysuckle and the left-handed Bindweed.)
91	* ThriftyScot: Possibly the least insulting stereotype used in "A Song of Patriotic Prejudice" (although the word they use is 'mean').
92	* TranslationYes: "Songs For Our Time", in which an extremely long phrase has a simple translation of "no".
93	* TrialByOrdeal: "Bring Back The Birch". The song was a satire on people who (when the song was written) wanted to bring back corporal punishment and hanging, and depicted people in previous historical eras wanting to bring back even older forms of punishment.
94	-->''Bring back the'' knout,\
95	''bring back impaling,''\
96	[[DroitDuSeigneur jus primae noctis]] ''and trial by ordeal...''
97	* UnableToSupportAWife: The singer in "The Youth of the Heart" wouldn't marry his sweetheart until he'd earned enough to support her... by which time, she'd married someone else.
98	* TheUnintelligible: On waiting for a plane:
99	--> Finally, you hear a voice through the loudspeaker saying (unintelligible gibberish); so you do that.
100	* VanityLicensePlate: In "Sounding Brass":
101	-->My car registration number's 1111 VIP.
102	%%* WeirdTradeUnion: "Bedstead Men" (or possibly it's a Weird Secret Society)
103	* WheelchairAntics: Michael Flanders would often use his wheelchair as part of his performance, sometimes spinning himself around on the stage.
104	* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: "The Spider", in which they sing about a feared spider in the bath, making them afraid to enter the bathroom.
105	* WithLyrics: "Ill Wind". Because Michael's French horn has allegedly been stolen, he puts words to the tune of the last movement of Mozart's horn concerto, and sings it, instead of playing.
106	* YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: "Greenſleeves".
107	--> At the bottom were several rows of very square but highly illuminated notes, and at the top it said: "Greenſleeves". Kyd looked at it and thought: it's a pretty unlikely title, for a ſong.

Context Music / FlandersAndSwann